


Hospital Escape

by berserk_angel96



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Beth and Noah are friends, Beth survives, Gen, Loads of walkers woohoo, No dumb scissors stabbing, Not even sure why I wrote this except that I hated her death so much, The Grimes Gang is together again
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:30:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9617948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berserk_angel96/pseuds/berserk_angel96
Summary: What could have happened if Beth had actually succeeded in escaping. No Bethyl here, although possibly some Boah, and general loads of walker kills as The Grimes Gang tries to get back together and stay that way, plus find a safe place. Note: THERE WILL BE NO ALEXANDRIA!!





	

Beth was surrounded. She raised her gun, squinted in the bright sunlight. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Noah limping through the mass of walkers as their ghastly faces turned towards her. How many were there?

It didn’t matter. More than she had ever faced, alone, in her life.

 _They can’t come close. They can’t come close_ -

A snarl came from her foot. One was on the ground, reaching for her sneaker as its rotten mouth snarled and dead eyes stared. Beth’s face twisted in disgust and she stomped on the head, watching it burst into a shower of blood and gray pulp. Stuffing the horror of it inside, she fired at one that used to be a woman, with scraggly long hair and a filth-encrusted bite gone black at her neck. A man came from her left, snarling with his cheek eaten open. She sprinted past the moaning corpses. Dead fingers gripped at her arms and she wrenched away.

Noah was staggering ahead- he was nearly there- he was through. She was almost there- a walker moaned behind her, but it was too far away to reach her on time. Tears spilled out of her eyes as she saw Noah on the other side, urging her on, his eyes wide with terror.

 _I’m almost there_ -

Two hundred pounds slammed into her from the left and the police officer’s arms wrapped around her waist. Beth went limp. Hope evaporated from her chest as though it had never been there. _I got caught_ , her thoughts blared at her, _I let myself get caught_...The man on her was fumbling with a ziptie, yanking it open.

_I was almost there._

Noah stared at her from the other side of the fence. The other side of the fence….where she would have been _free_ ….

“NO!” Beth shrieked. “NO!” The walkers scrabbling at the fence for Noah turned and looked at her with interest. Beth bucked wildly against the policeman. Had he put the ziptie on her wrists yet? Her arms were twisted behind her back. She scratched wildly with her fingers. It made no difference; he was kneeling over her legs. She kicked furiously and felt her heels merely tapping against his back.

“I’d stop if I were you, you little wildcat,” the policeman chuckled. Amused. Was there nothing she could do? Her eyes fell on the walkers lurching their way. The policeman yanked her to her feet as they hissed. It had worked before….maybe it would work again.

Beth screamed as loud as she could. The policeman slapped her and she jerked away, her ears ringing. He yanked the radio transmitter from his belt and spoke into it. Beth screamed and screamed, eyes fixed on the approaching walkers, as one with black hair and a mauled arm tottered faster towards them. The policeman reached to slap her again. Beth turned her face to his and bit his hand as it came in contact with her mouth. The policeman roared. She kicked him hard in the groin and he let go of her, slamming to the ground.

Lurching forward into the incoming mass of walkers, she felt a spike of fear and surprise when she realized her hands actually _were_ tied behind her back. It threw her off balance. The policeman’s yells reached her ears as two walkers descended on him, and Beth ran. Awkwardly, her tied hands jerking behind her back, and straight at the cluster of leering walkers by the gap in the fence.

She could get through. She could, somehow.

 _NO YOU CAN’T!_ shrieked a voice in her head. _They’re going to eat you alive. Your hands are tied. YOUR HANDS ARE TIED_ -

Closer, closer. The walkers’ eyes burned with hunger. Drool hung from their jaws as they hurried towards her. Beth slowed to a stop, the rational part of her brain catching up to her. What was she doing? The closest one was only a few feet away….a woman with stringy blonde hair, remarkably close to Beth’s own. It must have been beautiful when she was alive.

_I’m going to die._

After all this time. All this effort. _After all-this-WORK-_

The woman walker howled with hunger, her fingers reaching out at Beth like claws. A crowbar smacked into the side of her head and she went down. The pulpy mass of her head stained the concrete. Noah stood behind her, swinging at the clamoring walkers. “Come on!” he screamed. “Come on! Let’s go!”

Beth gasped for air out of sheer relief. She lurched after him and they slipped through the gap in the fence. They didn’t stop to talk. He led her down the empty alley, papers fluttering in the wind, as far to the overhang of an empty mechanic’s shop. “Stop,” Beth panted. Noah turned, his face full of concern, and she shuddered in place till her legs gave out, collapsing beneath her on the pavement.

Beth felt as if her entire being had been churned with a spoon and poured out. She couldn’t think. The sheer terror of what she had just escaped was overwhelming. When the walkers were coming at her, she hadn’t been truly afraid. It had seemed so abstract, the thought of her dying. But even now she could hear their moans coming from the parking lot and her thoughts whited out at what could have happened if Noah hadn’t been there. Her heart was thundering in her chest, and she grabbed at herself, clutching at her arms tightly. Imagining one of them missing, a bloody stump at her shoulder- like her dad-

Noah crouched down and spoke urgently. “Beth,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, but we have to move. They’re coming.”

Beth forced herself to get a grip. “We need to get rid of my ziptie,” she whispered, her breath coming in pants. Noah nodded and kept nodding. She could see her own fear reflected in him, the way he kept shifting foot to foot. “Alright.” Noah ran to a corner of the alley, searching for something he could use to cut through it. He ran back to her in just a few seconds. “Piece of glass,” he said. “It should work. “ He hesitated. “But I might cut your hands.”

“Do it,” Beth hissed, glancing back at the hospital. “We don’t have much time.” They had been out in the alley less than five minutes, but she was sure Dawn was already sending people after them. It was exactly the Dawn thing to do. She’d want Beth back, if only to punish her by killing more innocent patients in front of her.

Noah knelt down and began scraping at the plastic with the sharp edge of the glass. It stabbed at her twice, cutting her hands and making the plastic slippery with blood. The adrenaline coursing through her made the pain barely noticeable. After about two full minutes of cutting, during which Beth strained her ears for the rumble of a car, Noah yanked the plastic from around her wrists and threw it out. He grabbed her hand and she jumped up, listening to the silence of the alley.

There it was. In the distance- the roar of a car. ‘Which way?” she cried. Noah spared her a glance and looked up and down the alley. “Only one way to go!” he yelled, hefting his crowbar, and they sprinted out into the street. Papers fluttered towards them. Beth heard growls and looked to her left. A dozen walkers were lurking by a broken office window. Noah jerked towards the right and she followed, her sneakers pounding the ground. They ran a couple blocks more, whipping past walkers and looming hulks of metal and glass.

The roar of the car was no farther away. Beth looked behind her and tripped, nearly sprawling on the sidewalk. All the walkers they’d run by had massed and followed them. There must have been at least three dozen, spreading out and filling up the street.

“Noah!” she yelled, heaving for breath. “We have to hide! We can’t keep running!” He pointed with the crowbar at a revolving door across the street. Above in dull red neon letters read: MACYS. Together they sprinted across. Noah slammed into the doors first and strained against them. “Stuck,” he gasped.

“Give me your crowbar!” He tossed it to her and she caught at it, a tiny part of her surprised she’d been able to. Gripping it with both hands, she ran full tilt at the closest walker. No fear, Beth told herself. No fear, no fear, no fear. Just like at the prison, stabbing through the fence. But here there is no fence- The walker was too close. She nailed it in the head and it went down, taking her with it. The forked end of the crowbar was stuck in its skull. “No,” Beth pleaded. Three others were coming at her. “No, no-“ Stepping on the head for leverage, she gripped with both hands and yanked it out, blood spattering across her face. She spat some out of her mouth and swung to hit the nearest. “How much time?” she screamed.

She heard a thud and a screech. “It’s open! It’s open!” Beth kicked a walker in the chest and it stumbled back. Her hands stung and ached from the crowbar cutting into her palms. She threw it across and it skidded to a stop by Noah’s feet, and he grabbed it as she started running towards the doors.

Then her head jerked back and her vision blurred with tears of pain. Her _ponytail_. One of the walkers had her by the ponytail. Shrieking, Beth turned and grabbed its forearm. It gargled and lowered its mouth to her arm. She kicked at it and it lurched back, taking her with it- the walker still had her hair trapped in its gray fingers. Reaching up with strength she didn’t know she had, Beth grabbed its wrist and snapped it, skipping away and practically throwing herself at the revolving door.

Noah yanked her in and they pushed together, ignoring the walkers slamming into the glass behind them. Beth tried to see through the dusty glass into the dimness of the store, but it was too dark and she was too panicked to tell. Fear ran up and down her spine and she grabbed Noah’s hand.

“What?!” Beth pointed at the darkness. “We don’t know what’s in there! What if we just walk into another horde?!”

“Well, we know what’s behind us!”

Beth didn’t have to turn to look. Walkers slathered on the glass behind them, their mouths opening and closing like gaping fish. The claustrophia of it stretched her nerves like a taught wire.

“We should just be ready,” she said. “For anything that comes at us.” Noah hefted the crowbar on the ground. “I got this.” Beth nodded at him and swept away the bangs that had gotten in her eyes. Her scalp was sore and throbbing from the walker pulling at her hair, but she settled her palms against the glass, ready to push. “Ready?”

“I’m ready.”

Beth pushed carefully at the door, only a crack big enough for one person. Noah squeezed through first and she followed, turning to push the door enough so that it was flush with the wall. She didn’t know if walkers would be able to force a revolving door to spin. She didn’t want to think about it. If that happened, they were well and truly dead.

The air in the store was stale and thick with dust. Beth coughed and the sound echoed. Noah froze and she immediately felt stricken- what if a walker heard? Almost as soon as she thought it, a moan came from the left. Noah whipped around. The trickle of evening light from a window display illuminated a walker lurching past a coat rack, a girl in a black polo who didn’t look much older than Beth herself. Beth looked away as Noah swung the crowbar at her. It felt pointless, after all the gore she’d witnessed in just the past few minutes, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t save her eyes from one more thing. She looked around at the store instead.

It was massive. The clothes on the ranks looked untouched. It seemed as though they had walked into the men’s clothing and jewelry departments. Beth could remember coming here with Maggie…only one or two times a year, after she had saved up enough money to buy really nice clothes, and if her birthday that year had been especially generous (her 16th had been, and only a few months before everything started) they would even go to Anthropologie.

A wave of wistfulness passed over her and she almost laughed at herself. Really? After everything she’d been through, she still wished she could go shopping for clothes? At the prison, she’d tried hard to still wear nice outfits, tops and jewelry that complimented her jeans and cowboy boots. It was kind of silly, but she’d thought- really, really thought- that the prison was the last stop. That they could settle there forever, safe within its fences and walls...

Beth blinked away tears and reminded herself to focus. She could think about the prison later. “Let’s go?” Noah whispered, and she realized he had been standing and waiting for her while she’d been thinking. She nodded quickly, then realized what he was saying. “Wait. Where do you want to go?”

Noah’s eyes were wide and earnest in the gloom. “We can’t stay here. Too close to the door.” Beth nodded. She couldn’t believe she had even let herself relax. True, they were off to the side and away from the walkers’ line of vision, but…

“I think there’s an exit on the other side,” she said. “An emergency exit.”

Noah shook his head. “We can’t leave yet. It’s getting too dark- we just need someplace safe for the night.”

“Then the staff room,” she whispered. “We saw one walker already. That means there’s probably more somewhere around here, and it’s way too big to clear out.” Beth felt a twist in her stomach at the words “clear out”. At the prison, it had always been Rick and Daryl and the others to go into dark, enclosed spaces like this one and clear it of walkers for the rest of the group. Maggie would go with them too, as brave as she was. Beth would just….stay behind.

But Maggie wasn’t here. And Beth had to protect herself. She nodded at Noah. “Let’s- let’s go?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “But listen, Beth. You should have a weapon.”

“There’s just the clothes racks,” she said dubiously. Noah shrugged. “Metal is metal.”

For some reason, it struck her as funny. “Listen to yourself,” Beth teased. “All tough and everything. ‘Metal is metal. Country is country. Taylor Swift is Taylor Swift.’”

Noah grinned. “I thought Taylor Swift was country.”

“No she isn’t,” Beth said dismissively. “She’s more pop.” She headed towards a clothing rack, rummaging through the men’s athletic sweats and tossing them onto the ground. The rack was a thin metal rod, probably aluminum, mounted horizontally on a tall rod that balanced on a second horizontal one with wheels. She figured her best bet would be in separating the middle one from the other two. “Come help me with this,” she called over her shoulder. A shadowy figure appeared from the corner of her vision. Beth turned her attention back to the rack, tugging at where the middle rod met with the top one.

“Do you think-“

A moan sounded from near her shoulder, and Beth screamed as a walker fell onto her, bringing them both crashing to the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> I basically started out writing this out of sheer frustration with Beth's death and how idiotic and generally badly written it was. Although I love Beth and she's holding the limelight right now, other characters are likely going to step in. More walkers, less Alexandria. Enough said.


End file.
